Bobby Mackey's building to be demolished. Here's what's next for the historic nightclub
Bobby Mackey's Music World, often dubbed America's most haunted nightclub, plans to demolish its storied building this summer.
The Wilder, Kentucky, venue will move to the former location of Mugbees Biker Bar and Restaurant in Florence, with a soft opening set for Friday. Its original location will likely be demolished by the end of summer, promotion manager R.J. Seifert told The Enquirer.
Seifert said owners Bobby and Denise Mackey planned to renovate the 46-year-old honky-tonk bar. After conversations with the engineering contractor, the couple learned it would be too expensive to salvage the site.
They plan to rebuild a new, one-story bar on the land of the original location by 2026, but that date is subject to change.
"It's just really outdated. It's been there over a hundred years and the plumbing and the roof and the furnaces ... all the mechanical systems are just ancient," Seifert said.
What about the mechanical bull and ghost tours?
Seifert said the club's popular mechanical bull will be moved to an outdoor patio area at the bar's temporary Florence location by early fall, weather permitting.
Once construction is complete, the mechanical bull will move to the new building. It will even have its own designated mechanical bull room, Seifert said.
"He wants the new place to have an open feeling to it. No blocked sight lines. You can sit anywhere and see the stage or see the mechanical bull and the old building doesn't really allow that," Seifert said.
Gatekeeper Paranormal, the paranormal investigative group that runs the Bobby Mackey ghost tours, will continue to offer guided tours at the original location until May or June, according to Seifert.
Ghost tours are slated to resume at the future Bobby Mackey's Music World bar in Wilder. However, tours at the new location will primarily focus on the "portal to hell," or the large hole where handyman Carl Lawson is rumored to have dug up the journal of a pregnant singer named Joanna, who allegedly killed herself via poison after her father murdered her lover and hung him in the dressing room.
Seifert said Mackey plans to install plexiglass around the well, similar to a bank teller's window, so customers can view the attraction. The infamous concrete wall, dubbed the "wall of faces," that features water stains resembling human faces will also be preserved for the new location.
History of Bobby Mackey's Music World
Before there was Bobby Mackey's, the grounds were home to a 19th-century slaughterhouse, which was later torn down. In the 1930s, entrepreneur Buck Brady opened a nightclub on the land called the Primrose Club, which was supposedly taken over and run by the mob.
The nightclub was renamed the Latin Quarter and eventually shut down in the 1950s before reopening as the Hard Rock. After the Hard Rock closed in the 1970s, country singer and Kentucky native Bobby Mackey opened Bobby Mackey's Music World in 1978, as it remains known to this day.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Bobby Mackey's, dubbed most haunted nightclub in US, to be demolished
